Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/121105 
Year of Publication: 
2013
Series/Report no.: 
FIW Working Paper No. 103
Publisher: 
FIW - Research Centre International Economics, Vienna
Abstract: 
The establishment of the currently negotiated Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between EU and Ukraine is the next significant step towards Ukraine's deeper integration into the world economy, widely expected to result in additional welfare gains. As developing countries face some costs associated with trade liberalization, this paper contributes to the literature by analyzing the effects of the EU-Ukraine FTA taking into account the loss of tariff revenues as well as the changed economic conditions after Ukraine's accession to the WTO in 2008. In particular, we calculate the effects of a unilateral tariff elimination in a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model for Ukraine simulating three scenarios reflecting different means to compensate for the loss in tariff revenues. It turns out to be important to take these costs into consideration while modeling trade liberalization, as the results vary significantly across the scenarios. In general, we find that tariff elimination has only a small impact on the country's welfare because of the already strongly reduced tariff rates after Ukraine's WTO accession. The effects can even be negative if the country tries to refinance the trade liberalization costs by means of tax policy. According to our simulations the most welfare enhancing option would be the provision of financial support by the EU, which is in fact suggested in the latest European Parliament resolution.
Subjects: 
Ukraine
EU
Trade
Integration
CGE
Public Spending
JEL: 
C68
F13
F15
H50
O52
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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